


Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #6

by dairesfanficrefuge_archivist



Category: Highlander - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-12-31
Updated: 1999-12-31
Packaged: 2018-12-18 06:09:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist/pseuds/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist
Summary: by Palladia, Wain, Ysanne, vixen69, bookmom





	Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #6

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Daire, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Daire's Fanfic Refuge](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Daire%27s_Fanfic_Refuge). Deciding to give the stories a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Daire's Fanfic Refuge's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/dairesfanficrefuge/profile).

 

CIMWC #6

**Cheap Imitation Midweek Challenge #6**

* * *

**In the Cards by Palladia**   
The Endless March of Days by Wain   
Sea-change by Ysanne   
The Long Dark Happy Hour of the Soul by vixen69   
Changes by bookmom 

* * *

**In the Cards  
by Palladia**

_Three aces showing,_ Methos thought, _and a deuce turns up. Query: what suit is the deuce? Answer: The other one._

Methos had been playing solitaire on his computer for three days straight, punctuated by trips to the fridge and the loo, which he had decided to combine to save time. 

_Query: If there is a_ Hanged Man _card in the tarot deck, why isn't there a_ Bored Man? _Answer: Because ennui is harder to portray in a picture than death._

Three deals later, he had racked up his highest score ever, and felt no sense of victory at all. Maybe a walk. 

The Seine was so quiet tonight, reflecting the lights along its edge. Undirected, his steps approached the barge, which was dark except for the lights hung on the riverside. So, MacLeod was away or asleep. Methos considered letting himself in to raid the kitchen. Something, some small mouse of alarm, nibbled at the fringes of his awareness. 

He silently edged into the shadows, and watched. Men, a good dozen of them, approached the barge. There was a dinghy on the river between the barge and the other bank, too. 

He had his sword, but nothing else. No cell phone, no gun, nothing to balance the scale against so many. 

To be continued. . . 

* * *

**The Endless March of Days  
by Wain**

Herringbone clouds, dove gray edged with a golden apricot, wove their way across the western sky, and the sun made a final brilliant display over the city before dying in the west. It was the six hundred and ninety-fourth such sunset she'd seen in her life. 

She waited on her balcony for her manicure and pedicure to dry, noting idly that the pink color she'd chosen was exactly like the nearly translucent, tiny shells on the beaches of Sanibel Island, and on the Great Barrier Reef, and somewhere in Japan her prodigious memory didn't seem to have stored for retrieval. 

In three millennia, she'd been so many places-- _everywhere, really, and most of them more than once_ , she thought--that she wished she could forget all of them and start over again. 

Off the balcony, through the sliding door, and into the bedroom of her apartment she went, past furnishings she knew all too well that were lined up in arrangement number two hundred and sixty. She could have navigated it in the dark and thought of doing so, to be able to arrive at her clothing closet and blindly choose an outfit that was different from one she'd worn before. She had, however, already made every combination possible from what was in her closet, so she left the lights on. 

Thirty centuries contain fewer fashion options that most people imagine: long sleeves and short; high waistlines and low; short skirts, long, and everything in between; palazzo pants, bellbottoms, and boot cuts. There were fewer options indeed for an Immortal, for it was always necessary to stock a collection of long and flowing coats for those times when a having a place to hide a sword was the driving fashion imperative for a given occasion. This evening's choice of a little black dress-- _what else, darlings?_ \--and a stunning brocade, calf-length and swinging coat was one she'd worn innumerable times before on innumerable occasions. 

Habit drew her to a full-length mirror to check her appearance, but long practice had led her to perfection. She smoothed an imaginary lock of hair into obedience and felt under the coat for her sword. He was there; she always thought of her rapier as a person, had even named him somewhere in the early seventeenth century. Lancelot, her knight in shining armor, her protector, longer-lived than any of her forty-five mortal husbands, more constant than her two Immortal ones, Lancelot would accompany her this evening, as he had done for centuries. 

She pressed the elevator call button with her seashell pink manicured finger and rode in silence with the other passengers to the lobby of her apartment building. The night doorman called out to her as she left the building. 

'Hey, Ms. Baker! Knock-knock!' 

'Who's there?' 

'Ezra?' 

She cocked her head at the doorman and short-circuited the joke. 'Ezra a doctor in the house?' 

The doorman gave a good-natured shrug. 'One of these days, I'm going to find one you don't know.' 

'I doubt it, Bob. I know them all.' 

'You going to that big fund-raiser at the Met?' he asked, hailing her a cab. 'Goodnight, Ms. Baker.' 

She'd been a baker, and a weaver, and a midwife, every profession known to womankind and, breasts bound and dressed in men's clothing, all of the professions reserved for men as well. She gave the address to the cabby--she'd done that job for a few months--and settled into the wide seat, certain that she'd ridden in this cab before, certain, in fact, that she'd ridden in every single taxi in Manhattan. And Paris. And London. And those little green Volkswagen taxis in Mexico City. 

Along the deep east-west canyons carved by the streets, a dusky orange harvest moon was rising. She'd attended harvest festivals for most of her three thousand years until machines took over most of the work and people stopped celebrating the end of the growing season. 

The cabby pointed out a coach and horse circling Central Park and suggested that she might try taking one some time. 

'Been there, done that?' he asked in response to her silence. 

_Been everywhere, done everything over the course of a million days._ She paid him and got out of the cab. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she followed a flash of light down a side street to a place where the streetlights had failed. Into a garage and up a ramp she climbed, her body in a state of heightened, relaxed readiness. 

She saw him on the top level of the garage, struggling to his knees, a bloodied sword in his hand. Pushing up from the ground, he took a step back from the headless body in front of him and drew himself to a standing position. 

Her fingers swept along the side of her neck, surreptitiously taking her pulse and confirming what she already knew: her pulse was slow and steady. Even an Immortal's challenge failed to catch her interest, had failed to do so for years. Even this had become predictable. 

Standing, he was taller than she thought, and possessed of a hungry glint in his eye that she envied. 

'You have me at a disadvantage,' he said. 'But I'll be happy to meet your challenge in a few minutes.' 

Here, finally, was something she'd never tasted before, and she nearly laughed to realize that it had been right under her nose all along. She pulled her rapier from inside her coat and heaved it in an end-over-end, dizzying loop across the parking lot. Smiling, pulse racing and heart in her throat, she walked toward her opponent's drawn blade. 

* * *

**Sea-change  
by Ysanne**

_Nothing of him that doth fade,_   
But doth suffer a sea-change   
Into something rich and strange.   
(Shakespeare, The Tempest)   
\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

'Plodding' was not an adjective Adam Pierson would have applied to his lifestyle. 'Quiet,' perhaps, or 'uneventful' might fit, but surely not 'plodding.' He looked askance at the fellow Watcher who had just insulted him. 

'Are you trying to hint that I'm boring, Don?' 

'Hints are lost on you, Adam, so I've resorted to plain speaking. Yes! You're boring! You're a healthy young man, but you potter around in bookstores and libraries as if you were some ancient, doddering professor. Aren't you bored, for god's sake? Don't you ever want to meet people your own age, go out, _do_ things? 

'I _am_ doing something,' Adam protested, all innocence. 'Researching the life of someone who is five thousand years old is certainly not boring; it's fascinating. Listen, Don -- think of the things that he has done, the people he has met. Methos must be one of the most intriguing personalities in history.' 

Don Saltzer rolled his blue eyes toward the ceiling in exasperation and then focused them on his young-looking colleague. They had worked together for ten years, yet Adam was no closer to discovering anything factual about the legendary oldest Immortal than he had been at the start. 

'Listen to yourself! You still don't even know if Methos exists, except as a legend told around Immortal campfires. You've spent a decade in a Watcher dream world, Adam. Take it from someone twice your age: time races through our lives like a brushfire, burning us out before we even realize we're in danger. Wake up and start acting your age. Go dancing, pick up good-looking women, go sky-diving, just don't let your youth disappear without taking advantage of it. Go back to researching this mystery Immortal when you're too old to do anything else.' 

Adam, aka the elusive Methos, studied his friend with growing alarm. 'Don, are you all right? You'd tell me if you were ill, wouldn't you?' 

'No, no,' Don sighed, giving up, 'I turned sixty years old today, that's all. I looked in the mirror this morning and wondered who the old geezer in the white beard was. Sometimes I think that Christine is right when she says my being a Watcher has robbed us of a life. Don't let it rob you of yours, Adam.' He sat down at his desk and rested his balding head in his hands for a moment, then looked up at the man he had mentored. 'Oh, don't look at me like that. I suppose I'm just having my mid-life crisis a bit late. So - what have you done on the index we've been working on?' 

Methos let Don change the subject, but when he went home to his flat that evening their conversation was much in his thoughts. Perhaps Don was more right than he knew. Perhaps Methos had been playing the grad student role a bit too long, long enough for it to look odd to others. And of course, Don did have a point about this particular identity being, well, dull. In fact, he had begun feeling that he was living only half a life, passing for a mortal Watcher. How long had it been since he had faced a Challenge? How long since he had felt the sharp, exhilarating rush of fear so quickly honed into battle lust? Now that he thought about it, Methos could barely sense the Immortal fire within that had kept him alive for five centuries. He realized that he had been drifting for much longer than ten years, simply floating through the shallow backwater of mortal life. He had not only become boring, he had become complacent, and that was dangerous. 

Several soul-searching days later Methos answered the phone in his flat to find Joe Dawson on the line. As Dawson spoke, Methos' eyes grew wide. When Dawson rang off Methos sat for a long time, thinking furiously. Leading a dull existence was fine, but being out of practice as an Immortal was plain stupid. He had allowed himself to get tired, to lose himself. What had he been thinking -- that he was safe because he had been able to avoid fighting for a few decades? 

Don had thought himself to be safe, too, and now Don was dead. In his ruthless search for Methos, Kalas had taken Don's life simply as an afterthought. 

Suddenly sensing the presence of an approaching Immoral, Methos slipped on the headphones of his Walkman, turned his back, and assumed his nerdy-researcher camouflage. His sword was within easy reach, but with any luck this Immortal might be as honorable as Dawson believed him to be. With more luck he would believe 'Adam Pierson' was newly-made, maybe not even aware of his Immortality as yet. That would buy Methos time. 

Feeling his heart speed up in anticipation, he turned slowly to face the stranger. A tall, well-built man, a longhaired warrior with an ornate katana, was staring at him in confusion. 

'Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod,' Methos said, testing the name, 'have a beer. Mi casa es su casa.' 

For one electric moment this vibrant force of personality and presence looked right at Methos, saw right into him. 

_'Methos?!'_

His true name spoken in tones of such awe and incredulity jolted Methos. Something lying dormant at the core of him stirred into reluctant wakefulness and he saw his carefully constructed, boring life vanishing as though it had never been. 

* * *

**The Long Dark Happy Hour of the Soul  
by vixen69**

(Disclaimer--you know who, unfortunately. She knows from boredom. What can I say?" 

Methos reminds me I have eternity to work in--my last challenge reminds me I don't. The immortal Douglas Adams once pointed out in his Hitchhikers Guide series that there were beings who became immortal by accident, and thus never were cut out for it. Color me one of those. I get bored, people. Wretchedly bored. 

Yeah. Genevieve Fowler, venture capitalist, mad scientist, all-around crap-magnet and modern-Immortalist agitator (making the world a better place for the rest of us, by regularly displacing the rest of us-since 1992) gets wretchedly bored. I think it's the sound of my nonexistent biological clock ticking, advising me that I'm in no hurry to have two dozen of so new replacement hubby's, or breed some little rugrats, or do that other crap. 

Instead, I rob from the rich, keep the booty for myself, and kick a little in for the Watchers by funding their worst nightmare--my own research into what makes us Methuselan buggers tick. And dutifully drop my findings off with the poor b****** who serves as my Watcher. Joe related to me with some amusement, after the kicking back of a few cold ones, that he was ruefully approached by said rookie. 

"She's one of your...people...can't you tell her it isn't *right* to approach her Watcher like this?" 

If he never brought it up to MacLeod, people, he isn't gonna bring the issue up to me. Besides, I keep the riffraff out of his bar by proving to be bigger riffraff than most imagine. I even call the cops. Go figure. 

So why am I really bored? Don't I have a nice life, whacking the odd S.O.B. with a Game face and making new inroads into the study of a nearly mythological tribe of genetic mutant ancients and ancients-to-be? 

I tell Methos it's ADD (the nuns called it being a wiseass, the psychologist muttered dark things about Ritalin). He rolls his eyes. He knows about gifted students. Kronos was one. Not that I'm in his category (an inkling that buzzes in my brain recalls the scar--frontal lobe damage? He may have been an organic nutjob--not a conditioned nutjob.) I'm that. Simply too bored with the lesson plan. 

I occasionally challenge myself with extracurricular pursuits--ever the bored student--even before my breathing permit was given the infinite-renewal stamp. Never at Joe's, though. No competition, there, for one. And no motivation on my part--I can only imagine my tab if increased insurance premiums got tacked on. No--I go to the Zone--the ickiest part of Seacouver. It ain't exactly the Badlands in Philly, but it has its seaminess. 

And since I'm five foot six and basically bullet proof, I do what I do best-- 

Just to make sure I still can. 

* * *

**Changes  
by bookmom**

**WARNING:** Spoilers for part 4 of the Indian Spring saga. 

Thank you NOT LA-LA LANDER for inspiring me to finish off my 4 part story Indian Spring. I had no idea how to end it. Now I do. Look for the preceding story The Warm Breath of Summer at post near you. 

* * *

Home 


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